There aren't many films so tense, so nerve-wracking, that I have to stop watching and walk around the room. Just breathe. It happens every time I watch Harry Dean Stanton look for Jonesy the cat in Alien. The sounds of near silence are so intense-- the rattling of the chimes, the water dripping. Just one time, it'd be nice if Jonesy came bounding into Stanton's arms before heading off for a satisfying can of Starkist albacore tuna. No way Jonesy eats the chunk light.

The same foreboding tension permeates Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, set during the Vietnam War. I remember the intensity of the controversy concerning the movie's Russian roulette scenes. And no doubt, they're worthy of intense debate. But that was 1978, a product, I suspect, of the country's discomfort at confronting the seriousness of the PTSD afflicting so many returning soldiers and marines.

On screen, the scenes are horrifying but emotionally searing. They penetrate deep into your psyche.

Politically, it's a complicated film. I'm still not entirely sure what to think of the final scene, but if I'm still considering it 37 years later I suppose it's effective. Like all great war films, it is, in the end, an anti-war movie because it personalizes the physical and psychological torture of war for its characters. And man, those characters are memorable. Christopher Walken won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar®, one of five Academy Awards® for the film. Robert De Niro, nominated for an Oscar®, is at as his best as the leader of a group of friends--Russian Americans all--from a working class Pennsylvania town. Three of them, De Niro, Walker and John Savage (always and forever underappreciated) head to Vietnam.

The Deer Hunter marks the first of Meryl Streep's 238 Oscar® nominations (OK, 19). Not surprisingly, Streep gives her character-- loved by both Walken and De Niro--more depth and strength than I suspect existed on the page. De Niro spotted Streep on the stage in New York in The Cherry Orchard. In fact, according to Streep, De Niro saw Walken and Savage on the stage, too, getting all of them cast in The Deer Hunter.

The Deer Hunter connects to two other films, one among the greatest films of all time, the other among the worst. First, the good one: to stand in for Vietnam, Cimino filmed in Thailand, with critical scenes shot on the River Kwai, the setting for David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai, which, naturally, was shot in Sri Lanka. As for the lousy film, Roy Scheider initially had Savage's role but dropped out a couple of weeks before filming. Universal wasn't happy--Scheider had a three-picture deal--so the studio forced him to make Jaws 2, which he hated, along with everyone else.

So skip Jaws 2, see The Deer Hunter. But be warned, it will linger in your soul for some time.

by Ben Mankiewicz